Washington – Despite fervent denials by Obama administration officials, there were indeed agreements between Israel and the United States regarding the growth of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. As the Obama administration has made the settlements issue a major bone of contention between Israel and the U.S., it is necessary that we review the recent history.
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In the spring of 2003, U.S. officials (including me) held wide-ranging discussions with then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. The “Roadmap for Peace” between Israel and the Palestinians had been written. President George W. Bush had endorsed Palestinian statehood, but only if the Palestinians eliminated terror. He had broken with Yasser Arafat, but Arafat still ruled in the Palestinian territories. Israel had defeated the intifada, so what was next?
We asked Mr. Sharon about freezing the West Bank settlements. I recall him asking, by way of reply, what did that mean for the settlers? They live there, he said, they serve in elite army units, and they marry. Should he tell them to have no more children, or move?
We discussed some approaches: Could he agree there would be no additional settlements? New construction only inside settlements, without expanding them physically? Could he agree there would be no additional land taken for settlements?
As we talked several principles emerged. The father of the settlements now agreed that limits must be placed on the settlements; more fundamentally, the old foe of the Palestinians could — under certain conditions — now agree to Palestinian statehood.
In June 2003, Mr. Sharon stood alongside Mr. Bush, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas at Aqaba, Jordan, and endorsed Palestinian statehood publicly: “It is in Israel’s interest not to govern the Palestinians but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state. A democratic Palestinian state fully at peace with Israel will promote the long-term security and well-being of Israel as a Jewish state.” At the end of that year he announced his intention to pull out of the Gaza Strip.
The U.S. government supported all this, but asked Mr. Sharon for two more things. First, that he remove some West Bank settlements; we wanted Israel to show that removing them was not impossible. Second, we wanted him to pull out of Gaza totally — including every single settlement and the “Philadelphi Strip” separating Gaza from Egypt, even though holding on to this strip would have prevented the smuggling of weapons to Hamas that was feared and has now come to pass. Mr. Sharon agreed on both counts.
These decisions were political dynamite, as Mr. Sharon had long predicted to us. In May 2004, his Likud Party rejected his plan in a referendum, handing him a resounding political defeat. In June, the Cabinet approved the withdrawal from Gaza, but only after Mr. Sharon fired two ministers and allowed two others to resign. His majority in the Knesset was now shaky.
After completing the Gaza withdrawal in August 2005, he called in November for a dissolution of the Knesset and for early elections. He also said he would leave Likud to form a new centrist party. The political and personal strain was very great. Four weeks later he suffered the first of two strokes that have left him in a coma.
Throughout, the Bush administration gave Mr. Sharon full support for his actions against terror and on final status issues. On April 14, 2004, Mr. Bush handed Mr. Sharon a letter saying that there would be no “right of return” for Palestinian refugees. Instead, the president said, “a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”
On the major settlement blocs, Mr. Bush said, “In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” Several previous administrations had declared all Israeli settlements beyond the “1967 borders” to be illegal. Here Mr. Bush dropped such language, referring to the 1967 borders — correctly — as merely the lines where the fighting stopped in 1949, and saying that in any realistic peace agreement Israel would be able to negotiate keeping those major settlements.
On settlements we also agreed on principles that would permit some continuing growth. Mr. Sharon stated these clearly in a major policy speech in December 2003: “Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line, no expropriation of land for construction, no special economic incentives and no construction of new settlements.”
Ariel Sharon did not invent those four principles. They emerged from discussions with American officials and were discussed by Messrs. Sharon and Bush at their Aqaba meeting in June 2003.
They were not secret, either. Four days after the president’s letter, Mr. Sharon’s Chief of Staff Dov Weissglas wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that “I wish to reconfirm the following understanding, which had been reached between us: 1. Restrictions on settlement growth: within the agreed principles of settlement activities, an effort will be made in the next few days to have a better definition of the construction line of settlements in Judea & Samaria.”
Stories in the press also made it clear that there were indeed “agreed principles.” On Aug. 21, 2004 the New York Times reported that “the Bush administration . . . now supports construction of new apartments in areas already built up in some settlements, as long as the expansion does not extend outward.”
In recent weeks, American officials have denied that any agreement on settlements existed. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated on June 17 that “in looking at the history of the Bush administration, there were no informal or oral enforceable agreements. That has been verified by the official record of the administration and by the personnel in the positions of responsibility.”
These statements are incorrect. Not only were there agreements, but the prime minister of Israel relied on them in undertaking a wrenching political reorientation — the dissolution of his government, the removal of every single Israeli citizen, settlement and military position in Gaza, and the removal of four small settlements in the West Bank. This was the first time Israel had ever removed settlements outside the context of a peace treaty, and it was a major step.
It is true that there was no U.S.-Israel “memorandum of understanding,” which is presumably what Mrs. Clinton means when she suggests that the “official record of the administration” contains none. But she would do well to consult documents like the Weissglas letter, or the notes of the Aqaba meeting, before suggesting that there was no meeting of the minds.
Mrs. Clinton also said there were no “enforceable” agreements. This is a strange phrase. How exactly would Israel enforce any agreement against an American decision to renege on it? Take it to the International Court in The Hague?
Regardless of what Mrs. Clinton has said, there was a bargained-for exchange. Mr. Sharon was determined to break the deadlock, withdraw from Gaza, remove settlements — and confront his former allies on Israel’s right by abandoning the “Greater Israel” position to endorse Palestinian statehood and limits on settlement growth. He asked for our support and got it, including the agreement that we would not demand a total settlement freeze.
For reasons that remain unclear, the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government. We may be abandoning the deal now, but we cannot rewrite history and make believe it did not exist.
Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, handled Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.
These so called “unrwritten” agreements have been a feature of every administration. The reality, like it or not, is what the current administration reads into prior committements and in this case, both the U.S. and EY have BOTH reinterpreted their prior policies to reflect current political realities and pressures from their domestic constituencies as well as facts on the ground geopolitically. These agreements are history; what counts are the actions each side take now and in the future.
agreements go both ways, part of the agreement was that the gaza will be peaceful!! they break their part of the settlement, then there’s no valid agreement. we’re back at square one!!
It is now clear to anyone with a brain that both Hillary and the president have become huge disappointments to all American Jews who swallowed their promises and commitments BEFORE the election, only to see them renege on just about everything. It would be most valuable that the huge percentage of American Jews who voted for Obama remember these facts in the nest presidential election when he will probably look for a second term, and cast him out of the White House.. Just is case Hlllary runs — we must make sure she stumbles.
We pulled out of Sinai giving up on oil security, giving up on the Sinai oil fields (capable of supplying almost 100% of Israel’s daily needs), making Israel vulnerable to an oil embargo — solely on the *promise* of the US to supply Israel with oil whenever there is a crisis. Israel can barely last two weeks before the “lights go off” if there should ever be (G-d forbid) an oil embargo.
All this energy security; all this military security sacrificed, based on a *promise* from the US which we can now see doesn’t mean very much to the next administration.
Why should Israel *ever* trust the US’s assurances on its basic energy and security needs ever again?
How naïve of Sharon! How naïve of Begin!
I am not a navi and cannot predict with any knowledge of the future, but we have been observing trivial differences in the ways in which Obama and Hillary are throwing Israel under the bus.
“… wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice”
In 2003 Condoleezza Rice was National Security Advisor and Colin Powell was Secretary of State.
WHH
I find it quite amusing that this superpower and that presume to divide up the pie betwixt the usual factions with no consideration for the fact that Eretz Yisroel is a sacred trust held by G_D for the Jewish people alone. All these characters who currently flit across the world’s stage in this dividing process have yet to learn the lessons of what has happened when power brokers presume to interfere with this sacred trust. Does 5,000 years of history mean nothing? Does unabashed arrogance rule the Jewish People?
You know you can say what you want, Yidden voted for Obama, Democrats, Republicans, everyone voted for him despite what everyone heard in the background about the Obamas background! And the FACT remains Obama would NOT become President if Hashem would not want him to! So basicly we just have to watch from the sidelines what is going to happen and daven to Hashem to take care of his children…
He is on target with everything he writes except with what he says that: “For reasons that remain unclear the Obama administration has decided to abandon the understandings about settlements reached by the previous administration with the Israeli government”.
The reason is very clear to everyone; because agreements are meaningless when it suits the new policy makers in the United States. So thank you Hillary for making it apparent.